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Comment by numlock86 | Hacker News Reader

I've seen prototype "cables" designed to handle up to 800 volts at 100 amps for EV DC charging. In fact I had to carry a sample (just the cable and plug on the EV side, other end was open) a few meters and oh boy, I can still feel my shoulder and back just thinking about that. No idea how any regular everyday consumer is supposed to handle that. And that was even without any cooling liquid pumped inside which you'd probably have in the live application.

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These cables continue to surprise me, I remember prototypes for robotic “hands off” fuel pumps for petrol/gas that were being built in the 90s. With the rise of the standards around charging electric cars, it seems like a no brainer to standardise on robotics to handle the hook up as we go to higher power levels.

Park car roughly in the correct place, and wait. No more issues using any cable technology that’s appropriate like coolants or the sheer cable mass in terms of copper. The robot can be built to match , and every charging port makes a nice standard looking target for vision tracking and alignment to drive the robot to the right place every time.

That's what I was thinking. And with autopilot type systems the car could line it self up to the cable. The major downside is that this might increase vendor lock-in for recharging stations.

That is where legislation could come in.

This seems to be a great idea actually. An ISO standard cable with several tiers or power delivery ratings, mandatory for all EVs to accept should be the way to go. We have a standard gas/diesel "plugs" all over the world, why not have the same with EVs?

Edit: Obviously, a car should accept only the "tiers" that it is rated for, but the charging station and the car can negotiate which "tier" that they would like to charge.

Why not just standardize the height of the charging port? You can then just put the plug on a movable stand. No robots needed.

This is what I mean by "movable stand": https://www.slimlinewarehouse.com.au/movable-lcd-tv-stand/tv...

That's 80 kilowatts. To 'charge' a big gasoline truck, you'd put in say 20 gallons, which if done via electricity in 1 minute would be 57 megawatts, nearly 1000x more.

A gallon of gasoline is around 33kWh of energy. 33.41kWh*20/1min = 40MW

Diesel might be closer to 50MW? But regardless, it's not 33kWh per gallon of energy to the wheels. Most of the energy is wasted. So of course a battery electric truck wouldn't require that much energy to do the same work.

I've seen that trucks and buses just use multiple charging cables. But yeah, you'll never charge a large truck from 0 to 100% in 1 minute. Overnight charging will be the norm.

Yes, that was my point: Even cables that are already in the realm of "too big/bulky to be handled" don't come anywhere close.

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